Jan 24 2025
Davis, California
Invited by Professor Patrick LeMieux to give a keynote at the 2025 UC Davis Global Game Jam.
I spoke about culture as design, and design as culture, making reference to the work of one of Afghanistan’s first “modern” architects Abdullah Breshna and his advocacy for design based on place and culture.
Nov 11 2024
Vienna, Austria
Exhibited jainamaaz in Vienna for Between Worlds: Technology, Spirit & The Digital South.
Between Worlds: Technology, Spirit & The Digital South as a research presentation documents an ongoing investigation by the researcher/curator duo Mekhala Dave & Brooklyn J. Pakathi, exploring how ancestral (Indigenous, communal, spiritual) knowledge systems can fundamentally reshape our understanding and use of modern technology.1
Sep 26, 2024
Brooklyn, NY
Invited to speak about Afghan design and Farsi typography in Brooklyn at the Day of Translation organized by the Center for Fiction and the Center for the Art of Translation.
This panel explores intersections between the arts of typography and translation. Bringing together typographers, educators, artists, and translators working with different scripts, we will discuss how interventions in typography can be used to address issues in translation such as accessibility, gendered binaries, language preservation and revival, and colonial histories.1
Jan 30, 2024
Berkeley, CA
Published the most beautiful Islamic prayer time app on the app store under CamlCorp.
اوقات Awqāt (ow-kawt) means “times” in Arabic/Farsi. “Prayer times” in English then translates to اوقات نماز “awqāt namaaz” in Farsi. Awqāt displays Islamic prayer times based on the positions of the sun and the moon using a digital sundial to visualize sunrise, zenith, sunset, and twilight sky positions. Awqāt is the most beautiful Islamic prayer time app on the app store.1
May 20, 2023
Seoul, South Korea
Exhibited the Bamyan typeface in Seoul for Unrealized Archive 7: Text to Image, a project by Chris Hamamoto & Jon Sueda exploring speculative and “unrealized” design through systematic conceptual approaches.
Unrealized Archive uncovers “unrealized” graphic design projects that consumed many hours—sometimes years—of work, but were never produced. Unlike in architecture and product design, where “unbuilt” or “speculative” work is forefronted as an important subject of critical discourse, most of these projects have until now been buried in flat files or deep in hard-drive storage.1
May 04, 2023
San Francisco, CA
Wrapped up my first year (and first time) teaching design at the California College of the Arts.
I have the honor of teaching the beautiful souls of the MFA Design program how to program websites through the design process; websites that act as whatever they want them to be. The year ended with a collaborative classroom made website for the graduating show Interference.
Apr 25, 2023
Bamyan, Afghanistan
Featured on itsnicethat: Omar Mohammad revives Afghan culture through design and typography.
Omar’s work on the Bamyan typeface is a great example of how art and design can revive a culture and bring new ideas and concepts into the conversation. “The typeface is a simple design, yes, but I’m hoping it inspires and encourages designers and artists from Afghanistan to push the limits and boundaries of our work, especially conceptually,” Omar says. “Preserve, produce and share our beautiful culture.”1
Mar 31, 2023
Berkeley, CA
(Re)published an essay on mosque architecture in America: The American Mosque What, How, and Where to Build.
The American Mosque was originally published in 2018 by UC Davis. I was a student in my last year taking an upper division Anthropology course with no prior background in Anthropology whatsoever. My professor secretly submitted my final essay to the university wide Prized Writing competition, and my piece was selected along with 24 other students out of over 400+ submissions.
Dec 31, 2022
Bamyan, Afghanistan
Published my first Farsi-Arabic script typeface titled Bamyan.
Bamyan is a design project exploring the possibilities of a cultural typeface designed specifically for a region of Afghanistan. It’s not much, but it’s a trying contribution to the cultural design language of Afghanistan.1
May 03, 2022
Berkeley, CA
Published a research website, Flags Of Afghanistan بيرق هاى افغانستان , placing Afghanistan’s former flags in political, cultural, and design contexts.
Since the beginning of Afghanistan as a nation state, the design of its flag has existed in a constant state of flux. With each new leader, faction, or party gaining power, the flag and its emblem were altered to represent the new order in the country. Flags Of Afghanistan (FOA) is a study on the cultural and political implications flag design had on Afghanistan since the beginning of the 20th century.1
Feb 17, 2022
Davis, CA
Invited as a guest lecturer to Dr James Housefield’s Design Aesthetics & Experience course at UC Davis.
I shared a lot of failures, behind-the-scenes, and privileges that enabled me to become the designer I am today. I mostly shared how the Afghan-American experience shaped me as a designer and artist for the best. Thank you to Professor Housefield, and to my friend Jessie Escobar for supporting and for this photo.
Jun 08, 2021
Afghanistan
Designed and programmed Marcaz, a digital center for Afghan visual and digital cultural research.
A collaboration with curator Muheb Esmat, Marcaz مرکز is an online center that acts as an index of unknown and newly discovered cultural research, history, ideas, and information pertaining to Afghanistan. It is an accessible alternative to physical research, and to digital content that cannot be easily indexed on the internet.
Dec 15, 2020
The World
Programmed a website that places the user on an abstracted prayer rug, in a panoramic landscape, facing the physical direction of Qiblah.
In Farsi the word “prayer rug” is translated to جاینماز (jainamaaz). Breaking down the term further, the components become جای نماز, or “place of prayer”. This translation differs greatly from its Arabic counterpart, سجادة الصلاة (sajjadah as-salat), which translates roughly to “bowing, or prostration rug”. I think there is a beauty in both of these versions, but there is a poetic and abstracted gesture in the Farsi translation. It may stem from the beauty of classic Farsi poetry and literature, where the namer has given an object as simple as a rug a poetic identity; I have no idea.1
Dec 09, 2020
The Internet
Published an essay for the 2021 Are.na annual titled Tools for Cultural Production: Archiving Voice, Culture, and Community.
Wrote about the importance of creating tools for cultural production within our communities through the forms of archiving and research.
Aug 20, 2020
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Designed the identity for curator Muheb Esmat’s thesis exhibition No End in Sight at the Hessel Museum of Art.
No End In Sight is the first US solo exhibition of Aziz Hazara, and one of the few exhibitions of its kind to be curated, designed, and shown by a group comprised solely of Afghans. I collaborated with Muheb Esmat, curator and CCS Bard graduate, to design the identity, publication, and exhibition for the show.
Feb 19, 2020
San Francisco, CA
Gave a talk to CCA MFA students at the Curatorial Research Bureau on how to design an exhibition.
I shared my experience as an in-house graphic designer at SFMOMA and talked about some of the projects I’ve worked on, including SFMOMA’s first contemporary arts exhibition, Soft Power.